Attending Weak Signals: The Prevention of Work-related Illnesses

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18291/njwls.v7i2.81599

Keywords:

Health, Working Environment and Wellbeing, Organization & management

Abstract

This article examines the characteristics of communication among managers, human resource (HR) experts, and occupational health care specialists, as they deal with such informal information as weak signals in the prevention of work-related illnesses, using a theoretical framework in which the prevention of work-related illness is analogous to theory on crisis management. This is a qualitative study in which individual and focus-group interviews were conducted in a Swedish context with occupational health care specialists, managers, and HR experts. The results suggest that organizational solutions have failed and continue to fail at controlling workers’ health problems, although the main difficulty is not in identifying the ‘right’ individually oriented weak signals. Rather, it is upper management’s reliance on formal information (e.g., statistics and surveys) – because of the difficulty in supplementing it with informal information (e.g., rumors and gossip) – that makes it difficult to improve traditional health and safety work

Author Biographies

Roy Liff, University of Gothenburg

Associate Professor, Gothenburg Research Institute, School of Business, Economics and Law, e-mail: roy.liff@gri.gu.se

Ann-Charlotte Eriksson

Degree of Master of Medical Science, Independent Researcher

Ewa Wikström, University of Gothenburg

Professor, Department of Business Administration, School of Business, Economics and Law

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Published

2017-06-12

How to Cite

Liff, R., Eriksson, A.-C., & Wikström, E. (2017). Attending Weak Signals: The Prevention of Work-related Illnesses. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 7(2), 49–69. https://doi.org/10.18291/njwls.v7i2.81599

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Section

Articles